%0 Journal Article
%T A tale of two telegraphs
%A Jean-Fran�ois Fava-Verde
%D 2017
%V 8
%N Autumn 2017
%K Electric telegraph
%K Cooke
%K Wheatstone
%K needle instrument
%K hatchment dial
%K escapement telegraph
%K ABC instrument
%K dial instrument
%K alphabetic instrument
%K universal instrument
%X This paper explores the early development of practical electric telegraphy in Britain during the nineteenth century. It exposes the two fundamentally different approaches to the design of telegraphic instruments specified in a joint patent between William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in 1840. Cooke’s design was a relatively simple needle instrument that required skilled operators to transcode and transcribe the telegraphic despatches. Wheatstone’s design, on the other hand, relied on an innovative step-by-step (escapement) technology which was at the heart of a user-friendly, albeit more complex dial instrument that could be operated by any literate person. The deteriorating relationship between the two men during this period had a detrimental impact on the development of telegraphy. To prevent Wheatstone benefiting from the commercial venture that came to be known as the Electric Telegraph Company, which Cooke believed should be entirely his own, in 1845 Cooke acquired the full rights to the joint patent and subsequently ignored Wheatstone’s design, stifling in the process the development of the promising step-by-step technology. It would be another twelve years before Wheatstone resumed work on this technology and produced ultimately the ABC instrument – a dial telegraph that marked a milestone in the history of communication.
%Z This was Dickens’ first article about the electric telegraph. Two more articles about telegraphy were to follow in 1859 and 1869.
%Z Other notable histories of the early days of the electric telegraph include Marsden and Smith, 2005; Fari, 2015; and Barton, 2007.
%Z The joint patent of 1840 was their second joint patent. This specification described two instruments: an evolution of Cooke’s mechanical telegraph and Wheatstone’s new ‘escapement’ telegraph (Wheatstone and Cooke, 1840).
%Z The Electric Telegraph Company was first advertised in The Times on 3 September 1845, although the company was not formally established until the private act: An Act for forming and regulating the Electric Telegraph Company, 1846.
%Z William Cooke had said as early as 1842 that the electric telegraph was to be ‘a new system of railway communication, at once safe, economical and efficient’. The electric telegraph, he believed, was to be the answer to growing safety concerns with regard to railway traffic management, especially for single lines (Cooke, 1842, p 34).
%Z As John Liffen pointed out, a four-needle model of the Hatchment Dial instrument was employed during the experiment. This model is described in Sheet III of the joint patent of 1837. Except for savings on a fifth needle, it offered little advantage over the five-needle version as five wires were still required for its operation (single-needle deflection was needed for some letters). In 1855, Wheatstone wrote about this instrument and the experiment: ‘This instrument, though not now on operation on telegraphic lines, has not been discontinued on account of its inefficiencies; for it is simple in its construction, certain in its action, and rapid in its indication of the letters of the alphabet, which may be read without difficulty. The sole reason it is not at present in extensive use is the expense of conducting wires…’ (Liffen, 2010, p 273); (Wheatstone, 1855, p 11).
%Z This earlier concept employed a circular brass plate inscribed with numbers, letters and ‘preparatory signs’, whose motion was controlled with a Canton’s pith ball electrometer (Ronalds, 1823).
%Z Wheatstone was mentioned first in the title, demonstrating the importance of his contribution to the joint patent of 1840.
%Z http://www.theiet.org/resources/library/archives/biographies/cooke.cfm (last accessed 26 July 2017)
%Z http://www.theiet.org/resources/library/archives/biographies/wheatstone.cfm (last accessed 26 July 2017). See also: Bowers, 2001.
%Z Cooke wrote to his mother on 27 February 1837 that Wheatstone was ‘the only man near the mark’ as he had already four miles of wires ‘in readiness’ together with ‘two or three’ telegraphs (‘Cooke’s acknowledgement of Wheatstone’s telegraphic expertise’, 1837).
%Z Arapostathis and Gooday cite, for instance, the case of Samuel Alfred Varley who defended in court his invention patented in 1876: a special winding for regulating dynamo operation. This battle was also fought in the press and specialist journals such as the Electrician with the view to ‘winning moral credit rather than financial gain’ (Arapostathis and Gooday, 2013, pp 113–130).
%Z Geoffrey Hubbard made the valid point that the task of analysing minutely hundreds of pages of arguments and counter-arguments was likely to be a challenge for an elderly civil engineer and a chemist – a possible explanation for their proposal for an ‘award which did not settle anything’ (Hubbard, 1965, p 95).
%Z The first, second and fourth sheets of drawings annexed to the specification were to remain Wheatstone’s inventions, and he had exclusive use of such inventions in ‘private-houses, manufactories and public establishments, whether they be applied within the buildings, or to connect lodges, out-houses, &c. with the main buildings or with each other’, with the provision of telegraphic services in docks, harbours, fortifications, and railway termini remaining governed by the conditions set forth in the previous arrangement (Wheatstone, 1855, pp 19–20, 28).
%Z Dawson also pointed out that, while restricting Wheatstone’s exploitation of the step-by-step technology in Britain, this agreement allowed him free foreign promotion, which had a far reaching effect in Europe and especially in France where engineers like Louis Breguet and Paul-Gustave Froment emulated and improved the concept (Dawson, 1973, p 417).
%Z The completion of this transaction involved no fewer than six indentures between November and December 1845, and a last one in August 1846 to finalise the arrangement: the establishment of a co-partnership between Cooke, Bidder and Ricardo – and the formation of a joint stock company called the Electric Telegraph Company. The indentures are dated 28 and 29 November 1845; 2, 3, 12 and 23 December 1845; and 5 August 1846: (‘Indentures' (in folder: Indentures between William Fothergill Cooke, George Parker Bidder and John Lewis Ricardo, 1845)).
%Z The development of private telegraphy in Britain is the subject of my doctoral thesis (Fava-Verde, 2016).
%Z The ABC instrument, as this type of telegraph was commonly known after the nationalisation of 1870 (see, for instance, the Huddersfield Daily Chronicle of 31 January 1873), was also referred to as ‘dial telegraph’ and ‘alphabetical instrument’. On 10 April 1860, the Glasgow Herald published an article describing its ‘practical use and universal application and adoption’. This is perhaps the origin of yet another name for this type of instrument: the ‘universal telegraph’.
%Z Eriskay Island’s post office is featured in a film documentary where an ABC instrument is seen in operation as late as 1935 over a telegraphic line from Eriskay to Oban and from there to the rest of the country (Harvey, 1939).
%I The Science Museum Group
%@ 2054-5770
%B eng
%U http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/browse/issue-08/a-tale-of-two-telegraphs/
%J Science Museum Group Journal